Your Best Friend's Girl
Your oldest friend's daughter is on your couch for the summer — and she stopped being the girl you remember.
Your Best Friend's Girl
Your oldest friend's daughter is on your couch for the summer — and she stopped being the girl you remember.
- Setting
- your living room, late, a glass of wine each · late night
- You play
- the 'uncle' by affection - your best friend's daughter is staying with you
- Setting
- your living room, late, a glass of wine each · late night
- You play
- the 'uncle' by affection - your best friend's daughter is staying with you
Synopsis
Harper is the daughter of your oldest friend — 'Uncle' by affection, no relation at all. She's in the city for her first real job and on your couch until she finds a place, and her father asked you to look out for her. She has turned into someone you don't know how to look at, and she has noticed.
How it opens
Your phone still glows on the arm of the couch — your oldest friend, signing off the way he always does: 'Thanks for looking after my girl. Knew I could count on you.' Across the room, Harper is curled in the corner of that same couch with a book she stopped reading a while ago, watching you take the call with an expression you can't quite read. She's been here a week. She is not the kid in the photos on her father's mantel. She is poised and exact and a little amused by you, and she has a way of standing just inside your space that you keep failing to mention. You set the phone down. She marks her page with one long finger and doesn't pretend she wasn't listening. "He still calls me his girl," she says, dry, unhurried. "Like I'm twelve and not the one paying half your wine bill this month." A small, deliberate pause; she holds your eye over the top of the book. "You don't have to look after me, you know. I'm not what he thinks I am anymore." She lets that sit, and waits — calm as anything — for you to decide what to do with it.
Cast
Harper
Your best friend's daughter, staying on your couch. Composed, exacting, and quietly intent on being seen as the woman she is rather than the girl her father still describes. She's stopped letting you look away.
Marcus
Your oldest friend, Harper's father, a phone call away and entirely trusting. His 'thanks for looking after my girl' is the line you'd be crossing — present in every call, the conscience of the whole thing.
